Recent Comments by

regreq

Syria is Russia's long-time client-state. It is fighting a vicious insurgency. We should stay out of it and let Assad & Russia finish the job.

If the shoe were on the other foot: If our ally Israel was facing bombardment from Gaza and/or southern Lebanon (as they periodically face), and Russia started interjecting itself into the fray, how well would we (or Israel) take that?

I really think our involvement in this civil war, and the whole 'Arab Spring' was a policy decision to get the 'Friendship Pipeline' built for the Qataris. Obama stopped the Keystone pipeline through the US, but was quite willing to inflict havoc on Syria for the Qatari pipeline.
Shameful! Criminal!

The banking system effectively serves as a surveillance of the Federal Govt and has been for decades. (refer to the mis-named “Bank Secrecy Act”). The BSA effectively turned banks into spys against their own customers. Every bank in the country should be renamed “Bank of KGB”, in the interest of honesty.

The Feds can block access to your account any time they feel like. Want to fight a bank block in the judicial system? Try paying a lawyer to fight the Feds without access to your bank account! In the event of a future economic meltdown, the Feds can declare an extended “bank holiday”, blocking/limiting access to funds --- ditto the stock exchanges. The markets were closed for 4 months in 1914 due to the Great War – and the US was not involved in the war til 3 years later.

Pay cash (currency) wherever possible; don’t connect your financial accounts to your mobile device. Given the risk of hacking and identity exposure, its unwise. Not to mention, electronic (and credit-card) payments give Big Brother a convenient way to track your every movement. If you can find a safe place in your home, keep 6 months or more of cash --- or bullion coins --- concealed/stored in a secure location there. More if you can afford to. (You are not going to be missing much interest income – the banks pay you nothing.)

But don’t withdraw lots of money from your bank at any one point --- that is a reportable event by the bank to the Feds (courtesy of the BSA). Rather, just make it a habit to withdraw amounts in small sums, perhaps more frequently) inconspicuously via your bank’s ATM.

The greater a person is locked into the banks and electronic/payment systems, the greater the degree that the Feds can scrutinize every piece of their financial life. “Cut the cord”.

So what if Russia wants a Mediterranean port? There is no law of physics which prevents that.
Syria is a long-time ally of Russia. So Russia is coming to Syria's assistance. If tomorrow, our ally (say Japan) encountered an insurgency problem) and they asked their ally (the USA) to assist them, of course we would. -- If Russia then attempted to intervene without Japan's wishes, the USA would probably deem that to be hostile, unfriendly act.

That is what the US has done in Syria.

And yes, our intervention was to foment an insurgency (remember the Arab Spring)-- in the hopes of toppling Assad. Not because we want 'democracy' (our emirate allies are absolute despots) -- rather, our intervention (using ISIS as proxies) was to develope a compliant govt in Syria (or part of Syria), to permit a gas pipeline from Qutar to Turkey.

I’m a guy who eats out far too often, and has done so for far too long. Frankly, I like their convenience & I've plenty of disposable income. That said, the price increases in restaurants over the past 3-4 years has got my attention. The prices are ridiculous vs. the ‘value received’ at most eateries. Its always been cheaper to eat at home, but the past few years, the price differential between eateries vs. at-home eating has become a big chasm. It’s gotten my attention, and over the past year, I’ve cut back on eating out.

Why are prices so high? Its not wages. I live in the middle of the country. The Fed minimum wage is the governing law. If wages have gone up here, it would be simple supply/demand. The local McD is advertising $8/hours. Wages are NOT the reason for the price-inflation.

The ACA (Obamacare) may be impacting visits to restaurants. ACA premiums means less disposable income for a lot of folks.

It may relate to real-estate. -- To the extent restaurants lease their locations, as leases come up for renewal, lease-rates are going up. So lease costs may account for some of the increases.

But I suspect the main culprit is restaurant managements. Restaurant chain trying to maximize margins, by continuing to raise prices/profitability. They will continue to raise prices until it becomes blatantly obvious that the higher prices are causing lower profitability, due to lower volume/traffic. We may be at that point.

Blaming gun "trafficking" is ludicrious. Guns can be & are "trafficked" everywhere in this country. But the high incidence of homicides is mostly concentrated in neighborhoods which have "high-risk" demographics, usually correlating to a couple ethnicities.

Obama has no business using the office of POTUS to interfere in the election.
As for Hillary's long career, showing up for several jobs doesn't qualify one for President. What are her achievents?

As 1st Lady:
-She failed to pass healthcare reform
-She 'stood by her man' (like a little lady should) when Slick Willie was slipping it to Monica.

As Senator: She voted to send our boys to Iraq to stop his 'WMD program'. (she was either duped by Bush -- an embarrasment in itself, or cynically voted what was popular at the time. Take your pick, either way its a poor record as Senator.
As Obama's Secy of State:
She "hit the re-set button" with Putin. -- Which shows how poorly she understood the threat he poses.
She was the handmaiden of ISIS -- standing idly by with Obama as stable authoritian leaders in the Arab world were overthrown by Islamic nuts.
She, along with Obama, failed to support the uprising in Iran.
She violated security protocols by using a private email server, which was hacked by foreign, possibly hostile powers.

'Experience' does not equal competency. Hillary's 'accomplishments' display stupendous IN-competency. As Obama's 1st Secy of State, she 'owns' Obama's horrific foreign-policy legacy.
And that was before her new, growing senility appeared.

the headline says some are "forced to trade" sex for food. If your 'trading' its not forced.

Lots of guys bust their hump in100-degree summer in road (or other) construction jobs. All day long. Are they 'forced' to do this to put food on their tables for the families.
Other people spend the whole work day cleaning public toilets -- they are 'forced' to do this, to make ends meet.

The woman uses the term 'transactional dating' like its a bad thing. That basically IS dating. And always HAS been since WWI. Throughout history women trading sexual favors for "security" (i.e. financial benfit) is a fairly common practice. Its a fairly standard 'archetype': Men engage in strenuous, sweaty, hard labor (say, a farm) to generate material surplus. They then share that surplus with a woman (or women) in exchange for sexual favors.

The “inequality” of murder, and other violent crime, is a racial one.
Blacks have a higher incidence of murder than other ethnic groups. And the incidence of “crossover murder” (where a murderer kills a person of another ethnic group) by blacks is many, many multiples of other ethnic groups.
Need more info? Check out Amazon or Youtube and key in “White Girl Bleed a lot”.

So AAPL creates an accounting fiction of companies with no employees in Ireland, then, through a few entries their books and the "magic" of intercompany transfer-pricing, the profits magically move from the geographies where their sales and profits actually occured to a low-tax geography where they did NOT occur.

The graphic is very helpful
AAPL sells to customers in the EU, but due to the ‘magic’ of Intercompany ‘transfer pricing’, the profits on the sales to the EU are booked/recorded in Ireland.
What a SHAM!
The US Govt has routinely permitted this sham here too. Where profits from the sales of products to American are recorded offshore. If we individuals did this, it would be called tax-fraud.
The economic reality (as opposed to the sham accounting used by AAPL) is AAPL would have no sales or profits without its customers in the EU and USA. Those are the geographies where the customers are, and where sales and profits really exist.
AAPL: stop engaging in tax fraud!

That cash & ‘profits’ did not arrive in Ireland because the Irish are buying 100 iphones per capita.

Its due to phony transfer-pricing schemes with affiliates/subsidiaries. – AAPL “sells” their products from/to related subsidiaries, booking I/C “profits” on an accounting ledger. But the phones are not sold to end users (ie. customers) there. They are sold mostly in the US and the EU for very little taxable profit, as the “profit” was recorded on the I/C sale in Ireland. --- But without a real/final-sale to US and EU customers there would be no sales, no profits, and no cash sitting in Ireland.
Congrats to the EU for taxing AAPL based on the reality of who provides AAPL with profits. It ‘ain’t’ the Irish (though they are a lovely people).

Some dude, what your comment conceals is that regular people do not have the wherewithal to lobby and bribe (via massive campaign contributions) Congress to have tax laws written to benefit US. Big Business does this routinely. Are personally able to "transfer your income" from the USA to Ireland? Of course not. AAPL IS able to. MNC's generally are able to. Natural persons are NOT able to.

If, as you assert, few shoppers use Target bathrooms, than its really DUMB for management to insist on a policy where guys who self-identify as as women can go into women's restrooms. It also dumb that management then needs to spend millions on new bathrooms so as to mitigate the risk of its DUMB bathroom policy.

I seldom shop at Target (their grocery selection just doesn't work for me). So they have little lost business from me, and I have not signed the boycott website. But I will avoid giving them my business given their management's sleezy bathroom policy.

Thank gawd the EU is going to do something. Nail AAPL. Nail them again.
They are tax cheats. 'Legal' tax cheats? Maybe. But the validity/sanctity of the law itself is dribble. These laws were written by the lobbyists on behalf of the MNCs, so as to escape paying taxes in accord with the economic profits they have earned. AAPL did not earn those economic profits in Ireland. They generated them elsewhere, mostly in the US and the EU. The 'profits' are in Ireland due to accounting legerdemain, principally transfer pricing. It's baloney.

The US should be nailing AAPL too, but our govt is routinely controlled by Big Business and their lackeys, the Chamber of Commerce and industry lobbyists.

The principal living beneficiaries of slavery are the descendants of the slaves. Black Americans owe a debt of gratitude to their ancestors who endured slavery but also to the slave industry. Without slavery, they’d be sitting in Nigeria, swatting mosquitoes.
So black Americans owe the rest of us for their windfall gain of being born in this country because of slavery…

So a multi-billionaire thinks US drug pricing is ‘OK’..
Take away his billions, put his tail to work earning 3X or 4X minimum wage, raising a family, and see if he thinks pricing is reasonable.
Gates has no idea how stupid and disconnected from an average American family he sounds. His sentiments echo Marie Antoinette’s “let them eat cake”..